Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 259 posts

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#61

Post by nametakenobv »

mike_hearn wrote: post #43
nametakenobv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes money in France. Given France's economy size, it's probably billions. They need to pay taxes to the french government for the privilege of doing business there, so the government can sped it on schools and other infrastructure, so the french citizens can be prosperous.

The idea that doing business is a "privilege" granted by the state is exactly why France's economy is famously bad, with unemployment double that of the UK.

This idea is in place for every government, everywhere in world, at any point in history.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#62

Post by eropple »

tomp wrote: post #47
mike_hearn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, as an Irish company, you can open a subsidiary in France to do business in France. The whole point of the EU single market is that you do not have to do that. You can set up shop in Ireland and sell to the French market until the cows come home. You only owe Irish taxes (modulo the recent completely crazy VAT changes). Laws that say "forget the law, anything we think is unreasonable is illegal" are a gro…

> "forget the law, anything we think is unreasonable is illegal" That's basically how all Anglo-Saxon (including the US) law, i.e. case law, looks like.

Yup. A lot of people, not limited but often expressed in the tech rule, seem to think that laws are strict-matching constructs. But laws are intended to be fuzzily matched, and the judiciary exists to do that fuzzy matching.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#63

Post by eloisant »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #48
bambax wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to but you can; and apparently it's good politics too. Google made a big deal of its new office space in the center of Paris when they opened two years ago. Edit: of course, the right for an Irish company to do business anywhere in Europe is also one that can be abused. Separate companies are not needed for rights to be abused and offices to be raided.

Can only French companies open offices in the centre of Paris? Couldn't an Irish company rent office space just as easily?

An Irish company could probably rent office space, but to have employees under a French contract you need a French company.

Not only workers hired in France wouldn't want an Irish contract, but you can only have "posted workers" for a temporary period.

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=471&langId=en

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#64

Post by logicchains »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #57
logicchains wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except Google was heavily dependent on funding from various branches of the USG in its early stages. Search for it. But that funding could have came from anywhere. Just because the government funded something, doesn't mean that the thing would never be funded if the government didn't fund it. >Thats debatable. Any blind studies? Entirely anecdotal, but I've never met anyone who tried Bing and didn't switch back to G…

By the same logic Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo (much better for technical searches) could provide Google's services if they disappeared from the face of the earth. The USG was wise enough to fund them when they were extremely risky.

What I meant was Google's founders could still have founded it without government money, it would just have taken them longer to obtain the funding.

Money isn't enough to make a search engine; Baidu for instance has the Chinese government behind it but still produces worse results even for Chinese language searches than Google. Bing's had quite a lot of funding from Microsoft put into it.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#65

Post by nametakenobv »

logicchains wrote: post #56
nametakenobv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes money in France. Given France's economy size, it's probably billions. They need to pay taxes to the french government for the privilege of doing business there, so the government can sped it on schools and other infrastructure, so the french citizens can be prosperous.

>the government can sped it on schools and other infrastructure, so the french citizens can be prosperous. One of the fundamental take-homes of economics is that government spending is not what makes people prosperous. It may help achieve social outcomes, slice the pie more evenly, but not make it bigger. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP... , and cross reference against ta…

I'm not even sure why you saying this. Google does not pay its taxes in France.

Education, healthcare and law enforcement is what makes people prosperous. How do you propose to have them without taxes?

Or are you saying that French government spends enough already and thus Google should avoid paying taxes if they don't feel like it?

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#66

Post by partiallypro »

ersii wrote: post #4

"Several have been accused of using legal methods to minimise their tax bills." Since when is it illegal to follow the law? Sure, we all have different opinions on the legal gray areas and of whether certain or all laws are legitimate and to what extent - but come on, that quote is just ridiculous.

It's illegal when the government is short of cash, I guess.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#67

Post by eloisant »

DannyBee wrote: post #23
te_chris wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument makes no sense. They obviously need a presence in the world's 6th largest economy, otherwise why else would they have said presence.

I think you should look closer at the history of the paris office and why it exists. It's tremendously arrogant to think it "needs" to be there. It wasn't there for quite a long time, and i doubt it "needs" to be there.

They've had an office in Paris since 2002, for business.

Maybe you're talking about their engineering office. You might think they made it to please politicians, but I think the real reasons is for recruitment. There are many talented engineers in France, some of them not willing to move to Zurich, London or Silicon Valley. If they want a chance to hire them they need an office in France.

Anyway, supposing they get rid of their engineering office in Paris as a revenge, they'll still need to have a business office like they have since 2002.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#68

Post by charlesdm »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #59
charlesdm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends a lot on the country. For example: I'd say most self employed people in Belgium use an accountant to file their taxes. Some (a subset) of those also have a tax lawyer who helps them optimise certain things. Self employed people (i.e. entrepreneurs) who make decent money will have a tax lawyer, because inevitably, you'll bump into an unfriendly tax collector somewhere down the road.

From my experiences with self-employed people (doctors, hundreds of them - im in an MD-motorcycle club) they will try to write off anything and everything and the accountants are there to talk them out of it

That's only because those tax deductions are often accepted. If one can write off an entire holiday home with a reasonable chance of success, say 80%, then you'd be crazy not to try. If countries don't want that, they should change their laws.

In some higher tax countries, a lot of things are technically allowed, because that way they can tax "the little man" a lot and not tax higher earners as much (i.e. doctors, notaries, high earning entrepreneurs, etc).

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#69

Post by logicchains »

nametakenobv wrote: post #65
logicchains wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the government can sped it on schools and other infrastructure, so the french citizens can be prosperous. One of the fundamental take-homes of economics is that government spending is not what makes people prosperous. It may help achieve social outcomes, slice the pie more evenly, but not make it bigger. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP... , and cross reference against ta…

I'm not even sure why you saying this. Google does not pay its taxes in France. Education, healthcare and law enforcement is what makes people prosperous. How do you propose to have them without taxes? Or are you saying that French government spends enough already and thus Google should avoid paying taxes if they don't feel like it?

>Education, healthcare and law enforcement is what makes people prosperous. How do you propose to have them without taxes?

>Or are you saying that French government spends enough already and thus Google should avoid paying taxes if they don't feel like it?

I'm saying Google's paid all the taxes it's legally required to pay and has no moral compulsion to pay any extra.

But yes, I do believe the French government spends enough already. If Singapore, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Switzerland can achieve better education, health and crime rate outcomes than France although they have less government spending, maybe the French State should work on spending what it has more efficiently rather than just trying to take more and more.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#70

Post by [deleted] »

ctrlalt_g wrote: post #60
tomp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "forget the law, anything we think is unreasonable is illegal" That's basically how all Anglo-Saxon (including the US) law, i.e. case law, looks like.

My moment of epiphany and shock in law school was on realizing that right and wrong don't exist. As my professor used to say, "It's all theater."

[deleted]
Post reply on HN